How many admins/moderators?

[Randy]

Do you really need on a forum? And yes, I know it depends on the size but to be honest, one person can handle a forum til it hits at least 100 people easily. Two at the most. You really don't need more staff until you get past the 500 point.

 

[beowulf]

by the time we hit 27,000 members we had 10 mods around the world.............they just about managed at times

 

[The Dragon Master]

You need more than two. They can't be online all the time.

 

[Jazzy]

To be honest, one person can handle a forum til it hits at least 100 people easily. Two at the most. You really don't need more staff until you get past the 500 point.

In your equation, are you factoring in the time zone difference and the fact that the admins/mods can't be online 24/7? How many, in your opinion, are needed when you hit the 500 point?

 

[Naviero X]

I think that you certainly need more than 2 at the 100 point. It depends on the activity. 2 moderators could probably manage 1000 members, of which 30 are active (posting at least 10 posts a day). But if you have 100 members, each posting 10 posts a day, I'd say you need somewhere of 4-5 moderators. It also depends on the number of forums you have on your forum. If it's only 1, then that's not as bad (to me). If it's 100, then that takes some work.

 

[Cranos]

Depends on what the admin feels is necessary for his/her board. It's different for everyone and I don't really care whether the staff team is big or small.

 

[TheWizard]

we have 3 staff including myself with 1,443 members

up untill 1 week ago i was doing it all myself

 

[Nebulous]

There should be enough staff so that nobody feels overwhelmed.

 

[Steel Hurtin]

Depends on the setup that you run.



Say it's a sports forum, you're going to have:



Ownership

-Admins

-Tech Admin

-Global Mods

-Forum Mods

-NFL

-NBA

-MLB

-NCAA

-NHL

Graphics Team

Marketing Team



The forum mods are added once you've got a good following in that section, or to promote a following in the section itself. The graphics team you can do without, but if you've got some great designers, you're going to want to keep them there, hopefully exclusively. The marketing team comes about once the owner has laid the foundation for marketing, SEO, etc.



I generally like to seek out people with knowledge in multiple areas to keep the staff number down, and also assign Global Mods as the 'Enforcers' of board rules, plus they act as forum mod support. Admins generally did the behind the scenes tasks and took the lead on marketing.



So, basically, there's no right or wrong number of staff. You add them as you need them, and remove them as needed as well.

 

[RichEdmonds]

I calculate moderators and administrators so one person is online at any one time to help keep activity up regardless of time zone and in case any problems arise when I'm not currently online. I would then start bringing in more staff if we are unable to handle the volume of content and number of active members.

 

[Dorith]

I think minimal amounts of administrators. I personally prefer working alone or with one other person. Any more than that and I feel cramped in my work space on the forum. I like working and acting quickly on my forum, and if there are people that are impeding that, then I'd rather not have them. Having too many administrators causes so many issues that I think it's just easier to avoid it all together.



You can have as many moderators as needed I think. There really isn't a huge problem with large amounts of moderators, but obviously don't try to create an unnecessary army of them on your forum.

 

[Bluezone777]

The number of staff you need is based on what genre of board you are talking about, how big it is, how active it is, how many people are actively posting each day and what the staff team needs to do for the jobs they hold. Each board is going to be unique in how many they need to get the job done. The important thing to really consider is knowing that no staff team on the board is burning out from being overworked and no staff team is too overloaded as to create a situation where there is not enough work to keep the team busy. I do suggest always having a little more then what you need for your teams simply to have some room to work with if you should have staff going away on a temporary leave of absence for whatever reasons and to provide a buffer so that your team can still get the job done if staff should retire which will give you time to find replacements without being forced to quickly choose a replacement because your team can't handle the work anymore due to running on just the right amount of staff.

 

[Geoffrey]

I have 2 staff plus a co-admin on Affinity, and we really don't need more than that and 4 of us is plenty if not overkill already.



On Link Up, I need more staff just to keep each staff member from being overworked in the services department. So I'd say it highly depends on your board's genre and what you need staff to do.